Thursday, January 8, 2009

Peak Oil is Dead

This is probably somewhat obvious, but I suddenly stumbled across the thought that a belief in forthcoming catastrophe resulting from running low on oil is pretty much impossible. There are a lot more worries about the economy today with oil bouncing around $50 than there were when it was $100, before the financial problems really started hitting home. Similiarly, the world has proven that it can take $130 oil without too much discomfort. I find it very hard to believe that renewable sources are more expensive than that.

Not saying such a transition would be cheap, it would likely render several large vintages of capital equipment obsolete, but predicting a peak oil crisis just seems foolish to me now.

1 comment:

Peak Oil is not dead. Peak Oil is alive and well, and has crashed the economy. Economists will sit and watch the economy die, because they are ignorant of physics. When it is dead they will spew some garbage like, "Well it was caused by a counter deflationary spike in a over monetized bubble that was not managed with proper economic policy". But the reality is they are ignorant of physics, and they have blood on their hands. Peak Oil is about declining net energy production from declining quality reserves. Continuously increasing prices are the best case scenario, this scenario is not playing out. A far darker one is.Read: "When will oil production peak?" and "Understanding the Low Prices of Oil and Gasoline" at http://www.energystrain.com